Modern drug discovery methods require the use of automated liquid handling and dispensing systems for screening large numbers of candidate compounds to identify new drug candidates. The use of these high throughput methods has been made possible by the development of automated systems that can dispense extremely small volumes of reagent at high speed. However, many of the reagents used in testing these experiments contain salts or proteins which can clog the small dispensing nozzles after they crystallize or precipitate out of solution. At present, there is no way to dynamically monitor the dispensing process so clogged nozzles can contaminate a large portion of the run leading to significant waste in both cost and time.